Dorabphobe's fear / THU 3-12-26 / Citrus portmanteau / Celebrity supercouple of the 2000s / Activist/scholar known for her work in the prison abolition movement / Mad scientist in a 1964 Kubrick title / Sticks around for a demo? / Sultanate that once controlled Zanzibar / Lush hair's quality / Some double-headed drums

Constructor: Joe Marquez

Relative difficulty: Easy

THEME: FALLEN ANGEL (26D: Heavenly outcast ... or a hint to something found three times in this puzzle) — the letter string "ANGEL" "falls" in three different Across answers (merging with three different Down answers):

Theme answers:

• BRANGELINA / CHANGE LANES (17A: Celebrity supercouple of the 2000s / 3D: Move to pass, perhaps)
• TANGELO / ANGELA DAVIS (23A: Citrus portmanteau / 24D: Activist/scholar known for her work in the prison abolition movement)
• LOS ANGELES / STRANGELOVE (21A: Second-most-populous city in the U.S. / 9D: Mad scientist in a 1964 Kubrick title)

Word of the Day: ANGELA DAVIS (24D) —

Angela Yvonne Davis (born January 26, 1944) is an American Marxist and feminist political activist, philosopher, academic, author and social theorist. She is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Feminist Studies and History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Davis was a longtime member of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and a founding member of the Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism (CCDS). She has been active in movements such as the Occupy movement and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions campaign.

Davis was born in Birmingham, Alabama; she studied at Brandeis University and the University of Frankfurt. She also studied at the University of California, San Diego, before moving to East Germany, where she completed some studies for a doctorate at the Humboldt-University of Berlin. After returning to the United States, she joined the CPUSA and became involved in the second-wave feminist movement and the campaign against the Vietnam War.

In 1969, she was hired as an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). UCLA's governing Board of Regents soon fired her due to her membership in the CPUSA. After a court ruled the firing illegal, the university fired her for the use of inflammatory language. In 1970, guns belonging to Davis were used in an armed takeover of a courtroom in Marin County, California, in which four people were killed. Prosecuted for three capital felonies—including conspiracy to murder—she was held in jail for more than a year before being acquitted of all charges in 1972. [...] 

In 2020, she was listed as the 1971 "Woman of the Year" in Time magazine's "100 Women of the Year" edition. In 2020, she was included on Time's list of the 100 most influential people in the world. (wikipedia)

• • •

Really thought this was a rebus. All the way to the end, I figured the ANGEL was crammed into one box in those Across answers (BR[ANGEL]INA, T[ANGEL]O, LOS [ANGEL]ES), and that (for whatever reason) the "ANGEL" boxes were just an "A"s in the Downs. "A is for ANGEL? What the hell kind of theme is this?" When I got FALLEN ANGEL I thought "'Fallen' how? Those rebus squares are going Across, not Down." And only then did I see that the "ANGEL"s were not crammed into boxes, but rather merged with the Down answers that they crossed. I should've figured this out earlier, esp. when I tried to rebus "ANGEL" inside DR. STRANGELOVE and it wouldn't work. I even tried spelling it DOCTOR STR[ANGEL]OVE. No dice. At any rate, my not fully comprehending the theme until the end did nothing to slow me down, as this puzzle was extremely easy. The theme was not hard to uncover at all, and the rest of the grid played like a Tuesday. What's more (worse), the rest of the grid is pretty dull. All 3-4-5-6s, with only a couple of dramatic 8s to spice things up (HARDCORE, PURE EVIL). Luckily, the theme material in this one is really quite colorful. Would you believe I was thinking of BR[ANGEL]INA just yesterday!? I was watching this documentary on HBO called The Power of Film (a kind of rudimentary explainer of the basic thematic and structural elements of popular Hollywood movies), and there was a whole segment on Brad Pitt and I thought to myself "What ever happened to BR[ANGEL]INA? Did I dream that? That was real, right?" And so it was slightly eerie to have this be the moment I "got" the theme:

From here on out, the puzzle was a cinch. Loved seeing ANGELA DAVIS and STRANGELOVE, and HARDCORE and PURE EVIL are doing their damndest to spice things up, but the bulk of the puzzle felt a little flat to me. Still, the theme is interesting. Just not particularly tricky. Or, rather, it's tricky, but the trick is pretty transparent.

I booed when I got LOS [ANGEL]ES because that seems like cheating. LOS [ANGEL]ES literally means "the angels." Seems pretty cheap to "hide" your "angel" inside a word meaning "angel," especially after the much more clever angel-burying examples of BR[ANGEL]INA and T[ANGEL]O. I had no other strong negative reactions to this one. The "X" and the "Z" had me thinking "oh, I see we're Scrabble-f***ing today, why?," but those are small corners and the cramming of high-value Scrabble tiles into those sections doesn't really hurt anyone. Those corners remain solid. Doesn't feel like we sacrificed fill quality for the rather thin pleasure of merely having an "X" or a "Z" in the grid. So no harm done. The only part of the grid where I "struggled" was at FUR / RASPS. The clue on FUR is bonkers. "Doraphobe?" Do you all know that word? I had no idea what "Dora-" could possibly mean. Also ... people are afraid of FUR? Like, when humans wear it, or are you just afraid of all animals or what? HARDCORE way to come at FUR, that's for sure. And I've never thought of RASPS as [Barely speaks]. You can speak in a rasp just fine. "Rasp" means "utter in a raspy tone," and "raspy" just means "harsh" or "grating"—nothing in there about "barely." I nearly wrote GASPS in here, but I figured there was probably no such thing as a fear of FUG (a great word, but not a likely phobia source)

Bullets:

• 25A: Sticks around for a demo? (TNT) — as in "demolition." Nice clue.
• 38A: Sultanate that once controlled Zanzibar (OMAN) — I had no idea. Also, I have forgotten exactly what "Zanzibar" was. I feel like it was part of North Africa ... hmmm, not quite. It's a Tanzanian archipelago. So ... East Africa, not North.

• 33D: Stanley of "Conclave" (TUCCI) — also [Stanley of "The Devil Wears Prada"], which I watched for the first time earlier this week in anticipation of the sequel, which comes out later this year. The actors (TUCCI! Streep! Hathaway!) are all fantastic—charming, funny—even if the story was ultimately kind of flat and grotesquely glorified workplace abuse. "I endured my boss's bizarre sadism but wow what a great learning experience." Ugh. "Whiplash for girls" was my three-word Letterboxd review. Still, I can't say I didn't enjoy myself, and I'm definitely seeing that sequel.

Signed, Rex Parker, King of CrossWorld

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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Answer to the riddle ending "How many are going to St. Ives?" / WED 3-11-26 / Language in which "computer" is made up of the characters for "electric" and "brain" / Vaudeville show

Constructor: John Guzzetta

Relative difficulty: Easy (~8 minutes)

THEME: SERENDIPITY — Happy chance, as illustrated by the four invention stories at 17-, 24-, 36- and 44-Across

Theme answers:

• [In 1968, Spencer Silver at 3M Corporation was attempting to develop a superstrong adhesive ...] for POST IT NOTES
• [In 1928, Alexander Fleming at St. Mary's Hospital in London found mold in his cultures of staphylococcus bacteria ...] for PENICILLIN
• [In 1945, Percy Spencer at the Raytheon Manufacturing Company noticed the chocolate bar in his pocket had melted close to a magnetron ...] for MICROWAVE OVEN
• [In 1943, James Wright at General Electric was attempting to develop synthetic rubber for the war effort ...] for SILLY PUTTY

Word of the Day: CONTE (Old French tale) —

Conte is a literary genre of tales, often short, characterized by fantasy or wit. They were popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until the genre became merged with the short story in the nineteenth century. Distinguishing contes from other literary genres is notoriously difficult due to the various meanings of the French term conte that span folktales, fairy tales, short stories, oral tales, and fables. [Wiki]

• • •

Hey friends! I'm glad to see you all for an off-schedule Malaika MWednesday. I solved this puzzle while listening to orchestral covers of pop songs from Bridgerton. I love these and could listen all day long. 

I'm really curious to see what y'all think of this puzzle. This type of theme, where there's simply a list of words with zero wordplay or raison d'etre, is not my favorite. In fact, I taught a class on creating crossword puzzles on Sunday and emphasized that this type of theme would not be successful if they're trying to get published. Oops!! Sorry guys. Go ahead and make your lists!! 

Part of the lackluster feel to me is that the revealer is just a random entry. It could have been anything, right?? It could have been "good luck" or "pure chance," or "happy accident." There's nothing especially fitting about the word SERENDIPITY (it doesn't even have anything to do with inventions) except that it had the right number of letters to fit symmetrically in the grid, so it doesn't feel like a fun reveal. Similarly, I haven't heard someone say MICROWAVE OVEN in like a decade (it's just "microwave" in my circle) which makes it feel like they just needed a correct number of letters with that phrase as well.

Another thing that I found odd is the phrasing of the clues. I associate that styling, with the italics and the ellipses at the end, with a wacky clue / entry combo, and was expecting that, and then very surprised to not see it materialize. At the very least, I would (grammatically) assume that an ellipsis indicates a partial sentence. So I'd think that the clue for (e.g.) "chocolate chip cookies" would be: In the 1930s, Ruth Wakefield played around with a recipe and invented... and then the entry would fill in the blank. (That's one of my favorite invention stories btw, tragically left out of this puzzle.) I really don't get why the ellipses or the italics are there at all! I would have phrased, e.g, the first clue as just: [In 1968, Spencer Silver's experiments with superstrong adhesive resulted in this common office supplies]

The fill was nice and smooth, and I liked seeing DETECTIVE, and CHINESE with that clue, but overall, the puzzle felt very meh. Really curious to see if you guys felt the same way. I am also open to the possibility that I have a bad attitude right now because I learned the hard way last week that I have an allergy to PENICILLIN. It was harrowing. 

Benoit Blanc!! Probably my favorite DETECTIVE right now

What else? I used to always point out when a theme only involved white men. I guess I can do that here. But it seems like the people who care about that notice it on their own, and the people who don't care roll their eyes when I rant about it. *shrug*

Bullets:

• [Alternative to fries, maybe] for SLAW — I had "tots" here for ages. I genuinely cannot imagine a situation where you offered a choice between fries and slaw. Fries or a salad?? Absolutely! Or if you are at a barbecue place getting a plate, I guess you can choose your sides and both are options. But you should absolutely be allotted more than one side, and slaw and fries simply do not occupy the same conceptual space while planning out a plate.
• [Answer to the riddle ending "How many are going to St. Ives?"] for ONE — Can one of y'all explain this to me please
• [Many first-time smartphone owners] for TEENS — Had a hilariously un-self-aware moment when I angrily thought "I can't believe teens have smartphones!" and then remembered that I got mine at age sixteen. Oops!! I probably shouldn't have had it though!! And now there are kiddos getting them at age thirteen. Definitely bad vibes.

xoxo Malaika

Three points of self-promotion, which I'll bury after the signature:

1) I constructed a themeless puzzle for the Boswords spring league! The league has already started (Rex has a link to it below) so I'm not sure if you can still register. But if you already have, keep an eye out for my puzzle! I can't say when it's coming, alas-- it's a surprise!

2) I will be at Crossword Con and at ACPT on April 10, and I hope you come say hi to me if you see me! As far as I know, I am the tallest woman to construct a NYT crossword, so I should be easy to spot. (If that's wrong, please tell me.)

3) Back in December, I published a cute little book of easy crosswords. I probably told y'all about this when it came out, but I'm newly excited because my friend sent me a picture today of someone solving on the train!! So exciting.

[Follow Rex Parker on BlueSky and Facebook and Letterboxd]
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